Wenzel Mehnert

Wenzel Mehnert is a research employee at the Berlin University of the Arts and the Technical University of Berlin. He researches and develops methods of future studies at the intersection of science and art and is writing his doctoral thesis on „The Imaginaries of the Neurointerface in popular culture””. In his teaching, Wenzel Mehnert focuses on the use of speculative fictions (e.g. science fiction, speculative design, design fictions, speculative performances) for the assessment of visions of emerging sciences and technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence, SynBio, Internet of Things, neuro-enhancements, and others).

In an eclectic movement, he combines disciplines such as Science and Technology Studies (STS), Critical Future Studies (CFS) or Technological-Vision-Assessment with creative practices of worlbuilding, the deliberate process of creating a coherent storyworld, to reflect on current images of the future. His interest in the future is thus not a prognostic one. Instead of looking into the future present, he is interested in present futures, i.e. current assumptions about the future, where they come from, what they contain, what they conceal and how they can be reshaped through narrative means.